I'm the founding partner of Proteus International, and author of Growing Great Employees, Being Strategic, and Leading So People Will Follow. You can follow me on Twitter @erikaandersen. My websites are erikaandersen.com, and www.proteus-international.com. I'm insatiably curious. I love figuring out how people, situations and objects work, and how they could work better: faster, smarter, deeper, with greater satisfaction, more affection, and a higher fun quotient.

The Results Are In: Women Are Better Leaders

Just read an excerpt of an article from HBR, over at my friend Bob Morris’ blog. The article, by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, is based on a research study they did of 7,280 leaders in 2011.

They looked at leaders in a variety of positions – from very senior management to ‘individual contributor.’ In the study, they asked others to rate the leaders in 16 leadership competencies. According to the data shared in the article, they found that women out-scored men in all but one of the 16 competencies, and in 12 of the 16, the women were better by a significant margin. And, in the words of Zenger and Folkman, “two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking initiative and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly male strengths.”

And though there were more males in the study (and the imbalance increased at higher levels, as is the case in most corporations – at the highest level, 78% of the mangers were men), the women were seen as better leaders at every level. Again, in Zenger and Folkman’s words: “…at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows.”

This lines up with my experience. Women are among the most talented and respected leaders in the organizations with which we work; I often find that the women at the 2nd or 3rd level from the top in an organization, especially, are more impressive than their male peers. They build better teams; they’re more liked and respected as managers; they tend to be able to combine intuitive and logical thinking more seamlessly; they’re more aware of the implications of the their own and others’ actions; and they think more accurately about the resources needed to accomplish a given outcome.

This study by Zenger and Folkman seems to demonstrate pretty strongly that women are seen as better leaders than men by those around them. And there are other studies indicating that companies that have a higher representation of women in management ranks are more profitable and have higher employee productivity. And yet – I’ve noted this statistic before, but I’ll say it again in this context: only 33 of the Fortune 1,000 are headed by women.

So, what’s the deal? Why are women still so woefully under-represented, especially at the most senior levels?

I’d love to hear your sense of why this is still happening. Here are two elements I think have a big impact:

Women don’t self-promote. Of the 16 leadership competencies Zenger and Folkman assessed, the only one where men outranked women was “develops a strategic perspective.” One of the areas in which I observe women not developing a strategic view is the advancement of their own careers. I notice that many more men than women focus on where they want to take their careers, and regularly use some part of their time to develop the relationships that will support their success, and offer themselves for outside-their-day-job opportunities that will show their superiors they have the bandwidth and the capability to do more. Women, on the other hand, tend to put all their energy into simply doing the best possible job in their current position. We seem much more inclined to believe that work is a meritocracy, and that if you simply work hard and get great results, you’ll get noticed and promoted. Admirable, but not very accurate.

Senior men still mostly hire other men. My husband and I have been watching the first four seasons of Mad Men lately, and it’s shocking to remember that only 50 years ago, women in business were almost exclusively secretaries and telephone operators – and generally stayed in those jobs only until they got married. In the mid 1960s, only about 35% of women worked, and only 1 in 50 working women held managerial or professional jobs. The grandmothers and grandfathers of the young women coming into the work force today expected that women, if they worked at all, would be secretaries, nurses, teachers, librarians, or possibly factory workers, and that they would only work if they “had” to – that is, if they didn’t have husbands who could be the family breadwinner. The older white males who run most companies are only one generation away from those beliefs – and I suspect their parents’ expectations still color their hiring and promotion decisions more than they would acknowledge.

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Perhaps I’m being overly hopeful, but I’m seeing both of these phenomena much less often in men and women in their 20s and 30s: the young women I deal with in organizations tend to be as confident and ambitious as the men, and the young men seem to be much more gender-neutral in their hiring and promotion decisions.

But till these younger people come fully into power in business, what can we do to change the statistics, and give women a more equitable – and, according to Zenger and Folkman, well-deserved – shot at the corner office?

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“Our data come from 360 evaluations, so what they are tracking is the judgment of a leader’s peers, bosses, and direct reports. We ask these individuals to rate each leader’s effectiveness overall and also to judge how strong he or she is on the 16 competencies that our 30 years of research shows are most important to overall leadership effectiveness.”

If you’ve ever worked at Encorpera, you are aware that respondents will forward positive “evaluations” to reflect on their Diversity Commitment, and that overall, the Archaic White Male knows better than to give a female too negative a performance review.

The “study” is biased as usual to validate the expected results. Try polling these guys on women and leadership :

Interesting. I wonder how you’d discount the more quantitative research that shows that companies having a higher percentage of women in management are more profitable and have higher employee productivity.

I would discount it like this : those companies are enjoying temporary success in profits and perks derived from earlier market initiatives. They feel compelled to pad the structure with females to create an illusion of female empowerment, primarily to keep the Diversity shakedown artists at bay. However, since women focus more on establishing rules for the comfort and security of women, organizational decline in the face of marketplace competition is inevitable.

This article absolutely supports the claim that women play a very valuable role in leadership roles in business today. How the leap is then made that this fact makes them “better leaders” is just irresponsible.

While Elmer brought up some good points about the validity of the studies performed, let’s focus on the first quality of leadership in business that matters: influence. If a study tells you that women have been proven to be better influencers than men, the fact that men are in most of the positions to influence would prove that study invalid immediately. Women also have proven to be more risk and competition averse…and if you would like proof I will use Erika’s concession in the back-and-forth with Elmer. If you would like further proof, there is a field study done by U of Chicago economist John List. Men’s willingness to take risks in the first place is the only reason that most businesses exist in the first place.

One other factor that was rather shamefully omitted in this article was the inherent disadvantage women have in making it to leadership positions because of the stigma of childbirth. If a 30 year old female who just got married gets passed up for a management position for a 29 year old single male despite having slightly out-performed him, can you blame the company for making this choice? It’s the correct choice and further proves that we are not comparing apples to apples.

Erika, you do the women’s movement a disservice by making a blanket value judgment based on arbitrary and biased statistics. Let’s stop keeping score because the iPod you use, the Internet you search, and the bridge you drive over all say one thing definitively about which gender is “the better leader.” Let’s focus on the fact that women are valuable in leadership roles and necessary for the success of any business and the two genders need each other in business.

“If a 30 year old female who just got married gets passed up for a management position for a 29 year old single male despite having slightly out-performed him, can you blame the company for making this choice? It’s the correct choice and further proves that we are not comparing apples to apples.”